


like the castle in its corner

by greenlily



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Boarding School, Gen, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenlily/pseuds/greenlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last, hardest lesson is always this: What you take with you is nothing compared to what you leave behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the castle in its corner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLvop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/gifts).



When Ann comes out of orchestra rehearsal, the Report To Office notice is pinned to the call board. She has avoided looking at the Board for two days, instead making Ed or Sam check for changes to assignments or rehearsal times. Today she leaves the Hall before the others, and the Board is straight ahead.

Sam comes up behind her. He has grown absurdly tall, while Ann and Ed are still stuck in the front row of all the class photographs, and he easily reaches over Ann’s head to snag the folded square of blue paper. In a second, it’s crumpled and hidden in his enormous palm.

Ann holds out her hand. “I appreciate the thought, but you’d better give it to me. They’ll never believe I didn’t see it.” She unfolds the paper and flattens it.

“Why are you...” Ed peers over her shoulder, half-into his jacket and shedding possessions left and right. “Oh.” He shrugs into the other half of the jacket. “Maybe it’s a mistake.”

“No.” Sam bends to pick up Ed’s scarf and some pages of the Brandenburg Third. “Honestly, if you don’t get a new folder, I’m going to start sticking these to your forehead. No, Ann’s been dodging this for days, and if you’d been paying attention to anything besides Mari Dowsett, you’d know that.”

“Speaking of which.” Ann looks around and nudges them both into an empty classroom. This term’s first-chair violin fancies Ed, and her twin brother in the cello section fancies Sam, and neither twin is at all good at taking hints. She looks at her watch. “Oh good, there’s just time.”

“Time for what?” Ed spreads the Brandenburg pages on the desk and passes them to Sam to put in order. “There isn’t an appointment listed on that Blue.”

“It doesn’t need an appointment,” says Sam darkly, peering at measure numbers. “Not if it’s what I think it is.”

“Oh?” says Ed. Then, _“Oh.”_

“Right you are.” Ann has been hastily re-plaiting her hair. “If I’m lucky, it’s only a message from home.”

“And if you’re not lucky—” begins Ed.

Sam finishes, “—then you’ve got a visitor. From home.” He holds out a hand. “Give me your things. I’ll fetch them back to House Common for you.”

Ann passes him the stack of books and her orchestra folder. “I’d best hang onto the jacket and scarf. It’s getting cold out.”

Report To Office on a yellow slip would have meant the Music Director, but Blues are for a call to the Head of School. Ann flings herself down the stairs, and walks across the campus as quickly as she dares. It doesn’t do to be untidy or out of breath when meeting visitors.

When she gets to the Head’s Office, Jacqueline Perry from seventh-year Art is on office page duty, and the Head’s secretary isn’t there. This is not, Ann knows, an accident. No one from home would visit the school without making sure someone from the family--and _only_ someone from the family--was on hand to run errands.

“You can go straight in, then,” Jac says with a professional secretary’s empty smile. “Leave me your Blue and I’ll stamp it on your way out.”

Ann doesn’t know Jac Perry well, despite their being so close in age, and it’s not safe to make assumptions about who she favors. Swallowing a sudden mad desire to refuse, Ann sets the small blue paper on the desk without touching Jac’s hands. She straightens her jacket, straightens her shoulders, takes a deep breath, and opens the door to the Head’s private study.

Ann has been in this room only once before, when she and Gavin Dowsett were appointed form prefects. There are two enormous bookcases just inside the door, arranged so that you have to pass between them before you can see the rest of the room. She remembers a big desk, and a little table, and three green chairs in a half-circle before the fireplace.

The first chair is empty. The second chair is empty. The third chair is not.

“Hello, Ann dear,” says Laurel.

Ann forces herself to breathe. This was what you wanted, she reminds herself. You asked to see her, and you didn’t say it would wait until end of term, so you knew she might come.

She knows her face gives nothing away, has learned, over the years, the feel of muscles that are holding a not-quite-frozen expression of open innocence. The room smells of woodsmoke and white lilacs. She can’t take time to wonder how or where Laurel has sent the Head in order to empty his office for her own use.

“Hello, Aunt Laurel.” Ann picks up the second chair and replaces it silently, facing her godmother. Laurel does not care for unnecessary noises. And it is always, always a mistake to fail to meet her eyes.

“It’s lovely to see you, dear,” Laurel continues, as if Ann hadn’t spoken. “I was so pleased to get your note. The tone was very professional.”

She makes herself drop her eyelashes just for a second, a modest acknowledgment of perfunctory praise. “All the Music students do a course in business communications in Fourth Year. Thank you for coming all this way, Aunt Laurel.”

“You did ask for a meeting.” Laurel’s wide eyes and faintly smiling mouth suggest that perhaps Ann has forgotten.

“Yes, Aunt Laurel,” says Ann. It is also a mistake, for the younger members of the family, to acknowledge that Laurel may mean something other than what she says. One of her favorite tactics with the girls and young women is to goad them into responding to insinuations. It shows her where their insecurities lie. Ann doesn’t intend to let Laurel have any more information than she can help.

“Oh.” Laurel giggles, a tinkling bell without any music in it. “I think you could drop the ‘Aunt’ now, dear. You’re so nearly grown up, after all.”

Without realizing it, Laurel has provided Ann the opening she wasn’t sure how to find. “Yes.” Ann makes a try at copying Jac’s businesslike smile. “That’s why I wanted to meet with you. It’s about my inheritance from my mother.”

The change on Laurel’s face is instructive, the quick slide from amused interest to cool attention, everything in her eyes coming into sharp focus. “Well, dear, you’re not so grown-up as that, not yet. Poor Adrienne’s books and things won’t come to you until you’re twenty-one. Your uncles explained all of that.”

“No, not her books.” Ann takes a deep breath. “I’ve passed my sixteenth birthday, and that means all rights of claim are mine, from mother to child, so far as my station and strength will permit.”

There is no question that Laurel recognizes the ritual, or that she accepts Ann’s right to cite it. Her mouth hardens. “Go on.”

“I want,” says Ann clearly, “to settle your debt to my mother.”

“You _what?_ ”

Not _pardon me_ , or _I beg your pardon_. Ann has managed to surprise Laurel out of mannerisms that have settled in at the level of instinct, and that’s the only thing that gives her the courage to continue.

“Adrienne Leroy saved your life at the cost of injury that proved fatal. You told her she had a right to claim a favor of you, in recognition of her loyalty. Upon her death, that claim passed to me. I offer to settle the claim, and to disavow any further obligation to my mother’s line and any privilege of my family affiliations.”

Ann sits very, very still. She has passed through a gate, now, and shut it behind her without being certain of what lies ahead.

Laurel could choose to accept the offer. She loses almost nothing by Ann’s departure from the family. A minor member, too young to have power or followers--in all the ways that matter, the ways that don’t involve money, Ann is more of a drain on the family resources than anything else. The sooner she leaves the family, the less chance of her becoming troublesome later on.

The matter of the claim, Ann knows, rankles all the more because of her own insignificance. In the six years since Adrienne's death, Laurel has been in debt. To discharge that debt by granting whatever whim a sixteen-year-old can come up with…

Everything depends on whether the past six years have convinced Laurel that she, Ann, thinks in terms of small things and momentary wishes.

“Well,” Laurel says finally, “as you say, you’re of age now to settle the claim. It might have been wiser to wait, but it’s your choice. What favor do you ask?” The amused look has returned, as though she thinks Ann will ask what any teenage girl might--money, jewelry, a holiday trip to somewhere exotic.

Ann pauses. The moment before the conductor’s downbeat--baton poised in the air just long enough, and then a beat longer, until he’s sure of having everyone’s attention.

“Safe passage,” she says. “For myself and three friends. Through any family territory or gatherings where we may happen to wind up. I’m leaving the family, but that’s no guarantee that the family will leave me.”

This is the first of the tricky bits. The only question is whether Laurel spots it. Ann watches the smooth face, the pale eyes.

When the door to the study opens, Ann knows she’s won this round. She doesn’t know how Jac knew that Laurel wanted her. What she does know is that Laurel intends to grant her request. Otherwise, she wouldn’t need a witness.

For the first and last time, Ann stands before Laurel and holds out both her hands, palms up. Children of the family, such as she has been until now, don’t take part in this rite, and after today she will no longer be a family member.

Laurel covers Ann’s palms with her own, and locks her fingers around Ann’s wrists. Jac stands an arm’s length away, but does not touch. Ann begins a count in her head, _andante_ , stately but not lethargic. One, two, three—

—and on four, the palms of her hands begin to tingle faintly.

She keeps counting, as the tingle grows to a steady buzz and then tapers off. Laurel’s fingers, grown unusually warm around her wrists, slowly unlock and brush away.

Ann turns her hands palms-down and then palms-up again, as if showing them to be empty. Then she closes them into loose fists and lets them drop to her sides.

“Done,” says Laurel in her cool sweet voice.

“Done.”

“Done.” Jac’s voice, speaking last, echoes oddly. Standing as witness is not a formality. She sounds more normal when she adds, “I’m awfully sorry, Aunt Laurel, but I’ve got to go back out to the desk. There’ll be trouble if someone comes along and finds the office empty.”

“Of course, dear.” Laurel smiles at her. “Go ahead.”

As the door shuts behind Jac, Ann smiles politely at Laurel. “I’m afraid I’d better go as well. We’re doing a practice exam today.” Not for another two hours, but there’s no use letting Laurel know that.

She tugs her jacket into place and begins to untangle and resettle her scarf. The rough-knit wool catches on her hair, and snags on the calluses of her fingertips. She doesn’t hurry under Laurel’s pale gaze, lets the moment spin itself out like the silence between movements of a symphony.

“Ann, dear.” The sweet voice has discarded the note of too-knowing possession. It will be like this now, always, the kind words and the distant tone saying two things at once. Ann has heard it before, with aunts and cousins who have left the family. She has asked herself several times, over the past six years, whether she’d be able to bear it.

“Yes?”

“You haven’t said which friends you’ve chosen.”

“Any friends I like.” Ann is doing her best to sound like someone who thinks she’s won. “I’ll choose when it comes to it.”

“That wasn’t what you offered, dear.”

“It was what I _meant_.” She is speaking as sullenly as she dares, now.

“But you weren’t specific.” Laurel gives her the same professional smile Jac had used earlier—there’s no question that Laurel does it better. “That wasn’t wise. Let’s not draw this out, shall we? You may not extend the gift of safe passage, through any place or at any time, or tell anything of your bargain, to Thomas Lynn.”

Ann has timed this carefully, has made sure that her scarf is wrapped around her mouth and chin by the time Laurel takes the bait. She hasn’t been sure, until this moment, that she can stop herself from showing a triumphant smile.

Tom. Pale, weedy Tom, with his hunched shoulders and his unexpected sweet smile. Laurel’s folly, her greatest gamble. She had taken him from Council care, the year he and Ann were six, and passed him around in turn to all the family households that had daughters. Laurel knows the risks, she always has, and she believed that surrounding Tom with protective foster-sisters would keep him safe from everything—everyone—else.

This has never been all about Tom, not really. But for Laurel, everything these past ten years has been about Tom. He is a focused, acute weakness, like a bruise she can’t help prodding. And while she fixes on the bruise, she doesn’t notice the overall ache. Laurel has never looked past the surface when the first answer to hand serves her purpose.

Ann has no doubt at all who two of her three safe-passage friends will be. Who else would she trust at her back, after all? Ed will spot the third at a glance, if Ann manages to miss her, and Sam will tie himself into knots to keep them all safe.

Laurel has never had friends like them, not in all her long life, and in the end that’s going to be what brings her down. Ann isn’t sure how she knows it, but she knows. People who don’t comprehend the sacrifice made for love, are the ones most vulnerable to the power that the sacrifice invokes.

“Nearly finished, dear.” Laurel puts a hand on Ann’s shoulder. Her fingers are cool, now, through the jacket. “You know what must be done.”

Ann does know. Too young to stand formally as witness, she has still been called several times to watch this last part of the ritual. It’s part of the education of any child in the family. The last, hardest lesson is always this: What you take with you is nothing compared to what you leave behind.

She tilts up her chin to meet Laurel’s gaze. She has not, in the past, been in this particular position, so she has never seen what happens to Laurel’s eyes then. And none of the cousins have been able to tell her, afterwards, what to expect. No counting, now, nothing to measure the time.

Finally, Laurel lifts her hand from Ann’s shoulder and blinks gently, as though she has been lost in thought and is returning to the conversation at hand. Her smile, this time, is not professional, but the sweet empty smile of someone who has been making polite small talk with a distant social acquaintance.

“It’s been a pleasure to see you, dear. So lucky I happened to be in the neighborhood. Hadn’t you better run along to your practice exam?”

Here, at the last, is the most dangerous moment. Everything Ann has done so far, all her attempts to out-think an opponent with infinitely more experience, could be for nothing.

With what she hopes is exactly the right tone of mildly puzzled obedience, Ann says, “Oh. Yes. Of course.” This, too, she has planned—the slight shake of her head, the brief widening of her eyes at her surroundings, as if surprised but not alarmed to find herself in the Head’s private study with her godmother. And, finally, leaning up quickly to brush a kiss on Laurel’s smooth, perfumed cheek.

“Have a nice drive back, Aunt Laurel. I’ll see you when term’s over.”

She backs her way out of the study with a last view of Laurel’s polite smile and a drifting scent of white lilac.

Jac is still sitting at the Head’s secretary’s desk, blue paper under her hand. As Ann turns to face her, she slides the paper across the table. There is a second piece of blue paper mostly-hidden under it.

Ann looks at the paper. There are five words on it, written in block capitals.

She looks up. Jac meets her eyes, just for a second. Then she takes back the second piece of paper, and rattles the Report To Office notice. “Here you are,” she says, only a bit too loudly. “Stamped with the date and time. Show that to whoever’s class you’re late for.”

“I will.” Ann gives her the tiniest nod, just a fraction. Jac nods back. “Thanks awfully, Jac.”

Outside, the wind has picked up, and the grass is drenched. A cold, soaking rain is still falling, nearly sleet, and the paths are becoming slippery. Halfway across campus, Ann huddles in a doorway and looks at her Blue.

The stamp from the Head’s Office has a line where the person who’s stamped it is supposed to write in the reason for the office visit. Jac has written, in the same block capitals, “VISIT FROM RELATIVE”. Not, “visit from family member”, which is the standard message. For both Ann and Jac, _family member_ means something specific, and Ann will never need to use it in that context ever again.

Of course, as far as Laurel or anyone else in the family knows, Ann no longer remembers that it ever meant anything. But memory is the gift of Adrienne Leroy’s line, and their secret, the one thing not even her father knows.

Laurel has spent considerable effort, this afternoon, making Ann think that she has had a visit from her curiously young godmother—a quick and unexpected visit, born of politeness rather than affection. If her memory trick had worked, not only would Ann have forgotten the purpose of the visit, but she would remember the past sixteen years very differently.

Unfortunately, she will probably not be there to see Laurel’s face when—if—she finds out that Ann remembers everything.

She wraps her scarf tighter around her ears and starts off across the quad. Bending her head against the wind, she says Jac’s five words over and over to herself in the rhythm of her steps.

 _SHE’S FADING. TELL HIM EVERYTHING._

Jac doesn’t need to be more specific. The other ones, before Tom, have never been able to remember what’s happening to them. If anyone tells them, it slides right off their minds again, little drops running away like bits of mercury.

 _SHE’S FADING._

This time will be different. Tom Lynn will be the first one, the first ever, who can be aware of what will happen to him.

When Ann reaches Caxton Hall, where the maths and science classes are given, there is a sign on the door stating that her calculus review session has been canceled. It’s tempting to somehow attribute that to Laurel’s machinations, too. She sighs and heads for her House, halfway back along the way she has already walked.

Trudging across the wet grass, Ann acknowledges what she has so far managed to avoid: In some ways, it is all about Tom after all. The act that will save him and the act that will break Laurel are the same act, but he is the one who has the most to lose from it. The question of whether or not to tell him (and _what_ to tell him) is not a decision she can make alone.

This is not to say that she’s powerless to take certain other actions.

Ann ducks through the back door of her House and leaves her sopping jacket, scarf and boots in the tiny cloakroom. The air inside the House is warm and dry, and by the time she has climbed the three flights of stairs to the Common, she can almost feel her fingers and toes again.

Ed and Sam are curled together on one of the couches, poring over an open score propped on Sam’s bony knees. Sam jumps to his feet, when they see her come in through the door, and Ed catches at the score and sets it aside.

“Where have you _been_?” Sam takes both her hands between his and rubs briskly, pulling her over to sit on the couch. “Shove over, Ed. Ann, we looked for you, to tell you your session was off. Ed went to the Head’s Office. The page girl said the Head had been called away and that you hadn’t been at the office at all.”

“Not that I believed her,” Ed puts in. He has moved to sit beside Ann and is unplaiting her hair. For someone who is so careless with his own things, he is unfailingly gentle with the tangles. “But we did look all over. There, that ought to dry faster now.”

She’s not cold any more, not really, it’s only that she can’t seem to stop shaking.

Sam lets her hands go and gathers her up in his arms, as if she weighed no more than a child. She ends up curled sideways on his lap, her long legs draped over Ed’s knees. Ed presses against Sam’s side and wraps his arms around both of them. The three of them have sat like this dozens of times, ever since they were homesick First Years.

Ann has never wanted to be a soloist, not really.

“I’ve got,” she says through her chattering teeth, “something important to tell you both.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the song "Dirty Work" by Steely Dan. Thanks, as always, to the best of all possible betas.


End file.
